Thursday, August 28, 2014
Navigating the Global Landscape
Rudolph C. Ryser illuminates the path for Fourth World nations to escape state domination.
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Human Chains
Wow! Holding hands is so powerful!
Not only is 350.org sponsoring a People’s Climate March in New York City, as well as convergences, campaigns and mobilisations worldwide, but now they are doing human chains!
I’ll bet that has Wall Street titans shaking in their boots.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Treaties and Totems
In Treaty Rights and Totem Poles, Amber Cortes reports on the unified front of tribes and allies against Big Coal and Big Oil that Lummi schelangen (way of life) represents.
Shedding Light on the Fourth World
In Fourth World Geopolitics and the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, John Schertow interviews Dr. Rudolph C. Ryser of the Center for World Indigenous Studies about past, present and future relations between the United Nations, Indigenous nations, and modern states.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Red Skin, White Masks
Daniel Tseghay's review of Red Skin, White Masks by Glen Sean Coulthard illuminates the fraud of reconciliation, characterized by the accommodation forced on Indigenous nations by modern states. This violent transformation of noncapitalist forms of life into capitalist ones, quotes Tseghay, is a structure, not an event.
Challenging the disingenuous politics of recognition -- which includes transfer of land, delegation of self-determination, and economic development initiatives from the state to Indigenous communities -- "do little more than reproduce the systems of power they claim to uproot." Integrating Indigenous governments into the resource-exploitation economy, he notes, signifies the defeat of Indigenous peoples.
Symbols of reconciliation, says Tseghay, function as diversions from revolutionary change. Dismantling white supremacy and other aspects of ongoing settler state colonialism, he argues, requires organizing around the ethic of mutual aid, unencumbered by the urge towards hierarchies. Quoting Coulthard, "For Indigenous nations to live, capitalism must die."
Challenging the disingenuous politics of recognition -- which includes transfer of land, delegation of self-determination, and economic development initiatives from the state to Indigenous communities -- "do little more than reproduce the systems of power they claim to uproot." Integrating Indigenous governments into the resource-exploitation economy, he notes, signifies the defeat of Indigenous peoples.
Symbols of reconciliation, says Tseghay, function as diversions from revolutionary change. Dismantling white supremacy and other aspects of ongoing settler state colonialism, he argues, requires organizing around the ethic of mutual aid, unencumbered by the urge towards hierarchies. Quoting Coulthard, "For Indigenous nations to live, capitalism must die."
Saturday, August 02, 2014
Three-Ring Circus
Netwar in the Big Apple: Wall St. vs the Indigenous Peoples Movement is my latest over at Counterpunch.
